Aboard planes, death did not discriminate

Los Angeles  The co-creator of "Frasier," the widow of actor Tony Perkins, the wife of the nation's top legal officer and a man who had flown across the U.S. to retrieve his family's dog were among the victims killed in Tuesday's devastating attacks against the United States, officials said.

As news about the identities of some of the dead began surfacing, the tragedy the United States was still trying to absorb began taking on a more human face.

Osgood "Oz" Perkins II, an actor in "Legally Blonde," said his photographer-actress mother Berry Berenson, the widow of the late "Psycho" star Anthony Perkins, was among those killed when hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 was rammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Berenson, 53, who appeared in such films as "Cat People," "Winter Kills" and "Remember My Name," had reportedly been returning from a Cape Cod vacation. She was also the sister of actress Marisa Berenson and the granddaughter of art historian Bernard Berenson, who helped assemble some of the greatest art collections in the United States.

Attorney and news commentator Barbara Olson, the wife of President Bush's Solicitor General Theodore Olson, was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 en route from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon.

Olson placed two phone calls from the plane to her husband telling him that hijackers armed with knives and cardboard cutters herded passengers and crew including the pilot toward the back of the plane.

"What should I tell the pilots to do?" CNN reported Olson asking her husband. Ted Olson told CNN that his wife planned to fly Monday, but delayed her travel because she wanted to be with him the morning of his birthday, which was Tuesday.

Writer-producer David Angell, 54, who co-created "Frasier" and "Wings" with partners Peter Casey and David Lee, was a passenger, along with his wife, Lynn, a school librarian and advocate for troubled children, on Flight 11.

Lee and Casey described Angell as "a kind and gentle man with a quiet exterior that masked one of the sharpest comedy minds ever to write for television."

"His fingerprints are all over some of the funniest moments in 'Cheers,' 'Wings' and 'Frasier,"' they said in a statement.

The Angells had been returning home to Pasadena, Calif., from a family wedding.

Businessman Christopher Newton, 39, of Anaheim Hills, Calif., had recently relocated to Arlington, Va., with his family but was returning to the West Coast aboard American Airlines Flight 77.

His mission: to retrieve his family's yellow Labrador retriever, Buddy, who had been temporarily left behind during the move.